lists of things broken and in repair
by puppetierin
Summary: a glimpse into a universe where Itachi and Kisame have been adopted into Hidden Rain by Konan. Sasuke shows up and makes a mess; Naruto (and from a distance, Kakashi) makes things worse. Rated M for language.
1. Chapter 1

What even is life _**I s2g.**_

Hello everyone! 'Tis I, the Konan fangirl who _just can't give it up._

I was driving home from work the other day and was bowled over with an idea for an AU, so I wanted to try some loose sketching just to see what would happen. Let me know what y'all think (this hasn't been polished, so I'm looking for comments as to ideas or characterizations).

Direct credit for the Kisame-joins-Hidden-Rain idea goes to Remember my name by Kind of a big deal.

Naruto and all its nonsense belongs to Kishimoto.

" _My people could use a protector like you."_

" _A protector, huh? Nobody's called me that before."_

 _The look she sent up at him was nearly blank, except for a hint of a smile. "Rain shinobi do not forget their own; you are welcome here."_

 _Kisame grinned back at her._

 _Itachi showed up in her office some time later, a dripping umbrella held in one hand._

" _You owe me a favor," he said. He did not say for what, but they both knew what he meant. She nodded once. "Let me live here."_

Life in Hidden Rain moves on with these new refugees. At his request, she hands Itachi off to the head of trainees at the hospital, and watches from a distance as he absorbs himself in the study of healing; Kisame comes and goes from her office, dripping on the floor, telling her about his missions; she is the only person he can report to.

Occasionally, Sasuke shows up.

Konan knows better than to ask her people to restrain him. Instead, she addresses Itachi – "Keep it outside of the city, next time."

One night, he appears – soaked with rain and some kind of alcohol, and if there were tears on his face, they were washed away on the journey here – and stands in Itachi's foyer, the door open behind him, screaming obscenities, too drunk to attack, the Sharingan whirling in and out of his eyes as he attempts to focus.

Konan and Kisame materialize in the shadows behind Itachi, their faces blank and their stances neutral. Sasuke's rolling eyes land on them, and he sneers – "You can't even take an _insult_ by yourself anymore you have to call your faithful hound and this _bitch_ –"

"Kisame is not a dog, Konan-sama is not a bitch," says Itachi, the first thing he's said since this evening's flow of bile began.

"Oh, you'll say something to defend _them_ , but not to your _brother,_ you traitor, you scumfuck, you piece of absolute shit –"

A dog sniffing the ground enters the room, and as soon as he lays eyes on Sasuke, he looks over his shoulder and yells at somebody outside – "He's in here!"

A man with large eyebrows runs in, closely followed by Naruto Uzumaki. Sasuke turns slowly, sees his teammate, and reaches for a sword that isn't there. The motion upsets his equilibrium, and in quick order, he turns grey, then green, and leans over to vomit onto the wooden floor. The man with the eyebrows makes use of this opening to knock Sasuke out, and hoist him over his shoulders.

"Our deepest apologies, Lady," he says, miming a bow to Konan so as not to shift Sasuke's weight. Konan steps forward, past Itachi, and stares up at him, amber eyes steely. "Someday, my patience with your friend will run out," she says, voice quiet.

"Understood," he replies, and leaves, edging out through the door and back into the downpour.

Naruto bows deeply to Konan. "Lady. The Hokage sends his apologies." He digs underneath his jacket and produces a crumpled, damp piece of paper, which he unfolds and offers. Konan does not reach for it; rather, the paper lifts itself from Naruto's hands to present itself before her.

"These incidents have become so common," she states, "that the Hokage has taken to mimeographing his official letter of apology, in lieu of writing a new one each time." She shifts her attention back to Naruto. "The Rain, with intentions of friendship, forgives you this time. You are dismissed."

He bows again, glances at the puddle of vomit. "Yoshimaru will take care of that for you," he says, and turns to leave.

"Uzumaki-san." Naruto pauses and turns at Itachi's voice.

"What do _you_ want?"

"Don't give up on him."

"Like hell I would." Naruto glares and departs, closing the door roughly behind him.

The dog stares at the sick, mutters, "No way in hell," and follows Naruto in a puff of smoke.

Konan closes her eyes, takes a moment to soothe her headache. Adopting an Uchiha had come with unexpected consequences; at least this time, nobody had been burned. At last she looks around to study Itachi's reaction. She's never had much luck reading his face, but the stoop of his shoulders and the way his hair hangs over his face is much more telling. She exchanges a look with Kisame, who disappears into the kitchen, and touches Itachi's arm, wordlessly asking him to sit down.

The dining room windows open on a beautiful view of Hidden Rain at night: city lights surrounded by halos of rain, the spires and towers circled with late night mist. Konan has him sit facing away from it, and she sits beside him in silence, staring straight ahead. Touching broken things, she knows, sometimes makes them more broken.

Kisame comes in, bearing a tea tray. He sets cups on the table and prepares the drink, also not looking at Itachi.

Stillness is a skill that shinobi perfect over long years, but before the untouched tea stops steaming, Kisame picks up on some cue from Itachi and asks Konan to teach him a new shape.

At his insistence, they move to the window to practice by the encroaching city lights, leaving Itachi in the shadows, the edge of his robe skirting the light. She passes over a piece of paper from inside her sleeve and considers what to teach him. "The owl," she says at last, and begins the first fold. The progression of the paper from flat plane to bird is deliberately slow, so Kisame can follow and replicate the motions. (It is not as crisp as she would like; the owl shape is not useful to her, and thus she does not practice it often.)

The rain picks up, hammering against the building and as she waits for Kisame to complete a particularly tricky fold, her eyes wander to watch the city. Her city.

Her people move about in the darkness of her city. Spies, spies-of-spies, shinobi going to and from missions, little genin getting practice sneaking around an area they already know.

The gradual slowing of Kisame's motions catches her attention, and she looks at him, and then looks at what he looks at.

Itachi is slumped over the table; Konan instinctively sniffs the air for alcohol, but of course Itachi keeps none in the house. His shoulders twitch once, twice. Kisame moves to sit beside him, puts a stiff hand on his shoulder.

Konan hesitates, searching herself for something to offer, before joining them on Itachi's other side. Instead of taking his hand, she takes a corner of his robe sleeve. A small offering is still, after all, an offering.

He cries all the harder for their kindnesses, slight and brusque as they are.

Leave a review.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: So many thank-yous to Eppoif1. Knowing that there's a human on the other end of the internet who is listening is something I treasure, and I've gone back and read your comment several times.

I did not originally intend to write more in the AU, but… having a fellow human makes a great deal of difference. Thank you for being that human, Eppoif1. I hope you come back and tell me what you think of this chapter.

Naruto and all characters belong to Kishimoto.

0

Konan sits at Kisame's bedside and wonders how many times she will attend dying friends. She watches his faint breath touch the oxygen mask and the rain tap against the window; she observes how his pale skin seems to bleed into the sheets and the way his hair seems to be falling out in hanks onto the crisp pillow.

A report sits in her hands. Having already read it, and spoken with the shinobi who brought him in, she understands the details and is unsatisfied with the results. The doctor's prognosis brought about a similar response; her mouth thinned as his opinion was delivered, and she didn't notice the man's relieved look as he was dismissed from the room. And even as the door closed behind him, Konan could feel the words, still hanging there in the air above Kisame:

Never again.

.5

"What do you think, Itachi?"

He doesn't look up as he checks the IV.

"I don't know, Lady. I am not a doctor, and thus not qualified to comment on Kisame's prognosis."

He feels her eyes boring into the back of his scrubs, and does not respond to her unspoken suggestion; he checks Kisame's temperature.

"I don't ask anything of you," she says at last.

"No, Lady."

"I honor your desires," she says.

He tucks Kisame's blankets a little more securely around him, and looks at her. "You do, Lady," he agrees. She glares at him.

"There is nothing to add."

He nods, watches her stride from the room, and breathes in the odor of hospital and reminds himself that this is not a dream.

1

Kisame is dead when he wakes up. He must be. And this must be his reward: Lungs that refuse to expand fully, arms which hang like anchors at his side, and an infuriating little man in a white coat telling him what happened. Kisame doesn't need him to explain what happened; he feels the events in his weak chest and his dull eardrums, and more than anything in the blank space beside his bed.

Hours of training, endless katas, the slippery meditation sessions in which he reached out for that presence with a ritual question and felt it reach back with a companionable _Yes_. Years of power and success and victory couldn't inoculate him against this one failure, one defeat.

Samehada was gone.

Taken.

Kisame hates himself as he corrects his train of thought for the hundredth time:

Samehada left.

1

When Kisame had first arrived at Hidden Rain, Konan had taken time to explain the events leading to her control of the city. He knew most of it, but listened anyway; and when it came to one particular detail, which had lived on in hearsay and ecstatic whispers, he couldn't have stopped himself from asking if he tried.

"The Angel. That was you, wasn't it?"

She nods, not really seeing his point.

"Forgive my saying, Lady, but you don't resemble the terrible gossip."

"These things become exaggerated."

"Not this one. The legend has stayed true through the years."

She raises her eyebrows, not displeased.

"You want to see it."

He bows his head in acknowledgement.

She brings him a wooden box, plainly carved, and opens it to expose a mask wrapped in a scrap of silk – just a white oval with two slits for eyes. The texture reveals that it is made from paper.

"Can you tell what it is?" she asks, not touching it.

"An illusion," he says, also not touching it. "It smells strong." He wrinkles his nose and turns his face away, his eyes watering.

"Dramatics," she remarks as she refolds the silk and closes the lid, "are a cheap trick, and suitable only when you have no better cards to play. You," she adds, referencing Samehada at his side, "are more familiar with artefacts of substance… and will."

2

Painkillers aren't on the table for him. Weakness of the body doesn't require obliteration, just time and patience, but Kisame finds himself wishing, over and over again, for unconsciousness, a break from the loneliness in his head and the aimlessness in his heart.

2

Itachi comes in to sit with him on his breaks.

Where there was once camaraderie between them, it had been eroded away by time and experience, and neither knows what to say to the other. The past gleams with pride which is now tarnished and broken. The present is uncomfortable and strange, filled with things that don't want to be said, and the future – well, as far as Kisame can bear to think, there is none.

Kisame lies there like a discarded puppet, masterless and unseeing, and Itachi sits by him, and their silence fills the room like bubbles of carbon monoxide.

6

"Never again." Itachi looks up from his hands, which are folded in his lap. Kisame stares at the ceiling, taking pains to avoid his eyes – dark eyes, damn eyes, knowing eyes.

"Never?" he asks at last.

"My system got used to the boost. The pathways are bloated. My body has to learn again, if it can." That little man in the white coat had said it couldn't; Kisame pretends to not remember.

"It looks as though you are dying," says Itachi.

"Your eyes always did see better than anyone else's," replies Kisame, as he turns his head away.

10

His physical therapist is a tall man with a furrow between his eyebrows, and his hands are warm as they guide his arms and legs through the exercises.

Konan shows up as the therapist leaves him to his break.

"Hard to pretend to be asleep when you're in the middle of exercising," she says as she sits down opposite him, settling the skirt of her robe around her.

"Hard to run a Hidden Village when you're visiting a useless shinobi," he retorts, feeling the sweat trickle down his body.

"How lucky it is that I am seeing a pupil today, then." She produces a small stack of brightly colored paper and offers it to him. He doesn't take it, avoids her eyes, her blank face.

Before either of them can stir from the invisible deadlock, the therapist reappears with a bottle of water, and Kisame hears the door close behind her.

12

"Itachi." Kisame asks, his head tipped back to stare at the dull light above his bed. " _Why_."

Itachi kneels in the shadows by his bed, leans his head against the mattress near Kisame's hand.

"I don't know."

It is midnight, and the bitterness and the forgiveness are indistinguishable.

Dunno what the canonical stance on Samehada is, but my headcanon is that it's a cursed sword.

Leave a review.


End file.
